Opposition to Merkel's refugee policies builds after Cologne attacks

BERLIN, Jan 15 (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel's
popularity has dropped after sexual assaults in Cologne on New
Year's Eve that have been blamed on migrants, and a majority of
Germans now believe she is doing a poor job managing the refugee
crisis, a poll showed on Friday.

The Politbarometer survey for public broadcaster ZDF was
released as senior figures from the Social Democrats (SPD), her
coalition partner, broke ranks and challenged her optimistic "we
can do this" mantra in the face of a record influx of hundreds
of thousands of refugees.

"I am not as sure as Angela Merkel that we can do it,",
former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder told the German newspaper
Handelsblatt, calling it an "illusion" to think that Germany
could cope without introducing a formal cap on the number of
migrants it allowed in.

Stefan Weil, the SPD premier of the state of Lower Saxony,
told the newspaper Die Welt that Merkel would have to "correct
herself" over the course of the year, because her efforts to
find a European solution to the crisis did not appear to be
working.

A day after support for Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU)
dropped two points in a survey for public broadcaster ARD, the
new poll for ZDF made for even grimmer reading. It showed 56
percent of respondents believe Merkel is doing a poor job in the
refugee crisis, up from 49 percent the month before.

On a scale of +5 to -5, Merkel's own popularity slid to 1.0
from 1.7 in December, well below the level of her foreign and
finance ministers, who both came in at 2.0.

Support for her conservative bloc fell to 37 percent, its
lowest level in over two years. The anti-immigrant Alternative
for Germany (AfD) shot up to a record high of 11 percent.

The poll was published two weeks after groups of young men
in Cologne surrounded and groped women in the square next to the
city's cathedral on New Year's Eve. Police have blamed the
assaults on migrants, mainly from North Africa, but so far no
one has been formally charged.

A total of 1.1 million migrants entered Germany in 2015, far
more than any other European country. Under pressure from her
conservative party, Merkel has vowed to "measurably reduce" the
numbers this year. But she refused to introduce a cap, arguing
that this would be impossible to enforce without closing German
borders, with disastrous consequences for the European Union.

Instead, she has tried to convince European partners to take
on quotas of refugees, pushed for building "hotspot" reception
centres on Europe's external borders and led an EU campaign to
convince Turkey to keep refugees from entering the bloc. But
progress has been slow on all fronts.

"We either manage to curb numbers of arrivals on an
international level, or we will have to do things nobody wants
and which will harm Europe," Weil said.

The ZDF poll showed that 60 percent of Germans no longer
believe Merkel's "we can do this" pledge, up sharply from 46
percent in December.
(Writing by Noah Barkin and Tina Bellon, editing by Larry King)